Subscribe to this blog

Get Email Updates!

Search This Blog

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague." -Cicero

Sheriff Arpaio to Testify in Case Challenging President's Birth

World Net Daily, among others, is reporting that “the nation’s
toughest sheriff,” Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio (shown),
and his team of investigators called the “Cold Case Team” will soon
give evidence in a case before the Alabama Supreme Court considering
whether Barack Obama is qualified to serve as president of the United
States.Although dismissed by a lower court, the case has been appealed to
the Alabama Supreme Court. Specifically, the plaintiffs — 2012
Constitution Party presidential nominee Virgil Goode and Alabama
Republican Party leader Hugh McInnish — are suing to force Alabama
Secretary of State Beth Chapman to legally verify the Article II
eligibility of all candidates for president on the 2012 ballot.Article II of the Constitution
mandates that “No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of
the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution,
shall be eligible to the office of President….”Goode and McInnish, represented by attorney Larry Klayman (founder
and former chairman of Judicial Watch), argue that there is sufficient
evidence to disqualify Barack Obama based on their allegation that the
birth certificate provided by the White House identifying Hawaii as the
state of the president’s birth is fraudulent.Sheriff Arpaio and his lead investigator, Mike Zullo, have been
looking into the possible inconsistencies and irregularities in the
Obama birth certificate proffered by Hawaii state health department
officials.According to a statement published on a blog written by Commander Charles Kerchner,
who filed one of the first cases challenging Obama’s status as a
“natural born citizen, Zullo is quoted saying, “We recently discovered
new irrefutable evidence, which confirms, hands down, the document is a
fraud.”While similar challenges have been thrown out of court (including
this very case), the likelihood of success of this appeal may be a bit
brighter because of the man who was recently re-elected as the chief
justice of the Alabama Supreme Court — Judge Roy Moore.World Net Daily reports that “The case becomes all the more intriguing because Moore is on record previously questioning Obama’s constitutional eligibility to serve as president.”The participation of Sheriff Arpaio and Judge Moore in the case may
prove to be the perfect storm of personality and pugnacity — and more
importantly, compelling evidence — against President Obama’s Article II
“natural born citizen” qualifications to propel the issue into greater
prominence.The plaintiffs' most valuable piece of evidence is that the American
birth certificate of the president is not legitimate. By association,
they believe that President Obama was likely born in Kenya. This is not a
new assertion, but the truth is, with regard to Article II and
qualifying as a “natural born citizen,” it probably doesn’t matter.For an explanation, I turn to two important parts of Anglo-American history.An important step in the inquiry is to identify the source of our
Founders’ concept of “natural born citizen.” It is almost certain that
the men who drafted our Constitution accepted Swiss legal philosopher
Emerich de Vattel as the authority on the definition of that vital
concept.In his seminal treatise, The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law, Vattel wrote,

Natural born citizens are those born in a
country to parents who are also citizens of that country. Particularly,
if the father of the person is not a citizen then the child is not a
citizen either. Children cannot inherit from parents rights not enjoyed
by them.

Apart from an appeal to Vattel, there is the definition of “natural
born citizen” given in the decision of an English lawsuit from 1608 —
Calvin’s Case.In that case, the British court held that natural born subjects were
those who owed allegiance to the king at birth under the "law of
nature." The court concluded that under natural law, certain people owed
duties to the king, and were entitled to his protection, even in the
absence of a law passed by Parliament.Let's explore the possible sources and appropriate interpretations of the “natural born citizen” qualification.At the time of the drafting of the Constitution, a person born
subject to the British Crown could hold “double allegiance,” a concept
similar to “dual citizenship” as understood today.Our own Founding Fathers, nearly every one of whom was born in some
outpost of the British Empire, feared the damage that could come from
such divided loyalty.They instituted the “natural born citizen” qualification in order to
avoid what Gouverneur Morris described during the Constitutional
Convention as “the danger of admitting strangers into our public
councils.”As famed jurist of the early Republic St. George Tucker, a contemporary of Morris, explained:

That provision in the constitution which
requires that the president shall be a native-born citizen (unless he
were a citizen of the United States when the constitution was adopted)
is a happy means of security against foreign influence, which, wherever
it is capable of being exerted, is to be dreaded more than the plague.
The admission of foreigners into our councils, consequently, cannot be
too much guarded against; their total exclusion from a station to which
foreign nations have been accustomed to attach ideas of sovereign power,
sacredness of character, and hereditary right, is a measure of the most
consummate policy and wisdom.

In fact, as indicated in early records of the naturalization process,
men applying for American citizenship were required to make two
renunciations of all fealty to foreign powers before swearing allegiance
to the Republic of the United States.As a matter of fact, the possibility of any legal acceptance of
divided allegiance was explicitly rejected in a report issued by the
House of Representatives in 1874:"The United States have not recognized a 'double allegiance.' By our
law a citizen is bound to be 'true and faithful' alone to our
government."The practical effect of that proclamation is that in order to be a
“natural born citizen” of the United States, one would have to be free
from a competing claim for allegiance from another nation.That such a schizophrenic situation was not only anticipated but
accepted by His Majesty’s government during the time of the American
founding can be inferred from the impressment of American sailors into
the service of the Crown. During the War for Independence, British ships
would block American ships from sailing and then the seamen on the
British vessels would board the American ships and force the Americans
to serve the side of the Empire.The insistence on the part of the British that anyone born within the
realm was a British subject regardless of any voluntary severance
thereof and subsequent vow of allegiance to another prince was a
significant factor in the hostilities known as the War of 1812. Finally, in this regard, the British required no process of
naturalization as such. Simply being born within the dominions of the
monarchy of Great Britain was sufficient to endow one with the rights
and privileges granted to any British subject.Nothing such a person did later in life (including becoming a citizen
of another country) would ever alter his status as subject.Obviously, in the United States that concept is neither the law now, nor was it the law at the time of the founding.The inquiry should turn, therefore, to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The relevant clause of the 14th Amendment reads:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to
the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the
States wherein they reside."The principal architect of the citizenship clause of the 14th
Amendment was Michigan Senator Jacob Merritt Howard, a Republican
representing Detroit. Senator Howard crafted much of the language that
was eventually ratified as part of the 14th Amendment.During the debates that embroiled the Senate in the years following
the Civil War, Senator Howard insisted that the qualifying phrase
“subject to the jurisdiction thereof” be inserted into Section 1 of the
14th Amendment being considered by his colleagues. In the speech with
which he proposed the alteration, Howard declared:

This amendment which I have offered is
simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that
every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject
to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a
citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons
born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, [or] who belong to
the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the
Government of the United States, but will include every other class of
persons.

How could a person “born in the United States” be simultaneously a
citizen and a “foreigner” or “alien” if the mere fact of nativity
settled the question of citizenship?Another legislator commenting at the time of the ratification of the
14th Amendment, Representative John Bingham, provided the following
clarification of the meaning behind the “subject to the jurisdiction
thereof” clause:"Every human being born within the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen." (Emphasis added.)There’s the rub regarding the case of President Obama’s legal status. Even were he born, as one comedian joked
“out of an apple pie, in the middle of a Kansas wheat field, while Toby
Keith sang the National Anthem,” Obama’s father was not an American
citizen — and thus the president is the child of a person with legal
allegiance to a foreign sovereignty and therefore does not conform to
the accepted legal definition of "natural born citizen."

Photo of Sheriff Joe Arpaio: AP Images

Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American
and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification,
the NDAA, and the surveillance state. He can be reached atjwolverton@thenewamerican.com